Architecture and the Sacred

Hermeneutic Approach - Case study of the Zawiya Ziyania in Kenadsa, Algeria

Abstract

What are the impacts of the sacred and spirituality on the architectural design of the Zawiyas? Raised under the influence of Sufism, the zawiya is adopted by brotherhoods at the beginning of their propagation on the lands, in order to honour the memory of a patron saint and preserve the Muslim worship. Considered as a religious institution dedicated to Koranic education and affiliated with a brotherhood, which it is often named after, the Zawiya is frequently designed with reference to the spiritual foundations that it is meant to represent. Today, with the embracing of new socio-cultural and ideological references and the various economic mutations due to state intervention, the zawiyas have lost much of their previously enjoyed notoriety and religious power. Yet, some zawiyas of south-western Algeria have kept some prominence and are still vectors of social practices connected with religious education, despite the ruin-form condition of the ksour. Our hypothesis is that the architectural design of the buildings that make up the Zawiya was not only the product of technical or rational knowledge. We think that the designers would have used a know-how that was devoted to the sacred, to spirituality and Islamic Sufism. In order to verify the validity of our theory, we conducted our study in the zawiya Ziyania in Kenadsa. The analysis process draws mainly on the method of in-situ observation as an important tool to collect the crucial data relevant to the morphological study to find out how this spirituality shaped the material construction of its different buildings.